Kabuki experience with the Heisei Nakamura-za ensemble

For the first time in more than 15 years, the traditional Japanese theatre Heisei Nakamura-za will be performing at the House of World Cultures. Following guest performances in New York, they will be presenting Summer Festival: A Mirror of Osaka for the first time ever in Europe. 'Theater that keeps adrenalin pumping,’ wrote the New York Times in 2004.

Popular theatre of the highest aesthetic quality: This is what Kabuki has stood for ever since Nakamura Kanzaburo - the Japanese star actor, leading man, and director of the 118-year-old Tokyo theatre Kabuki-za – who represents the 18th generation of a theatre dynasty, embraced this tradition and changed it in the process.

For over 400 years now, ritualised forms of acting have been handed down from father to son, until the successful film and television actor Nakamura Kanzaburo devoted his life to introducing Kabuki to the age of the mangas and animés and making it world famous.

With his ensemble Heisei Nakamura-za, Nakamura Kanzaburo has succeeded in combining opulent images and brilliant acting with slapstick, high tension and surprising incursions of reality. The stage at the HWC will be transformed into a traditional Edo theatre within five days. One-hundred-and four of the theatre ensemble’s actors and technicians will be coming to Berlin, and approximately twenty actors will take to the stage. In line with tradition, the women’s roles will be played by men: the costumes and the masks are an art in themselves.

The action in Summer Festival: Mirror of Osaka is based on the Don Quichote motif: In their endeavour to safeguard the fame and honour of ‘their’ caste, three would-be Samurais, who are fishmongers in real life, find themselves heading straight for disaster. A character study, stage event, carnival, street theatre – all at the same time! Heisei Nakamura-za’s performance promises to be a unique Kabuki experience!

In Berlin Summer Festival: A Mirror of Osaka is being presented by Mediapool Veranstaltungsservice GmbH and the House of World Cultures.

Kindly supported by the Japan Foundation

Inside KABUKI - Photographs by Akio

To coincide with the Kabuki Theater’s guest performance, the Deutsch-Japanische Gesellschaft Berlin e.V., together with the Museum für Asiatische Kunst Berlin, is showing an exhibition of Kabuki pictures by the photo-artist KUSHIDA Akio.

With a lecture in German by Heinz-Dieter Reese, M.A., Japanisches Kulturinstitut KölnAction, Emotions, Effects: Kabuki – Japan’s Total Theatre